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poetry

From the pitch blue that strikes
ache in the eye for trying
to find a bottom,
we carried into
Reeth under
an evil of colour.
Sundown bedraggled
with cloud-rips.
Lost I’d say, or left behind-
Red-sided
garter snake ecdysis,
vixen smeared
over an oily road;
or that thrift shop cardie
you’d never wear,
but for the soul of your mother,
can’t take your eye off.

Smokestacks that whispered into clouds
now slim cathedrals in dedication
to nocturnes of silk organs
periscopic in the system. Small crowds
of spiders boil from the lips.
in webs, wing dunes rise
resembling pumpkin pips;
the last rot of mulched flies.

Piston jellied stuck.
Ants march the shaft in a double-helix.
Moths choke the whistle cavity;
animate shadows of the nook.
In dust-light of oblivion
oily spectrums flash
from pulsing obsidian
of beetle backs.

Slime filigree fractures
suedes of decay,
drawing out continents
in the dust shale; pictures
etched by godly mollusk.
A new planet born
in backscatter musk.
A second first dawn.

Amputated carriages,
twitching still and world scattered,
hollow the core. A murderous
un-pegging of cargo marriages.
But empty bodies must be filled.
Each split chrysalis
and ghostless thing billed
a thriving new metropolis.

In Notre Dame, there’s a bookshop
where they stick stickers
over every price and barcode,
marking each book up five, ten, twenty euros,
because it’s famous.
If you buy a book,
the lovely french till lady, who looks grotesquely literate asks,
“Would you like a stamp”?
And every customer gets a look of worry
and quietly asks,
“Does it cost extra?”
It doesn’t, and so every person says
“Yes, I’d like a stamp please”.

It’s always full of beautiful people
wearing their very best writer’s outfit-
Shawls and scarves all cleverly draped,
like the wind in Paris had delicate fingers.

Up the stairs to the left
there’s a little old piano
in a small enclave
and you’re allowed to play,
if you’re able,
but not allowed to take any photographs
in case you disturb someone’s studies.

Opposite the piano is a wall of post-it notes
with bits of prose, and lines of poetry, and songs, and messages;
all written by the patrons, all in different languages.
Each one assiduously chosen by their writer as the
champion of their portfolios. The line that communicates a pure essence,
and if some wandering publisher reads it,
will storm the world in search of them
to publish every sick and sweet word.
But they just sit there in a sort of dogged rest,
looking somewhat cemeterial,
twitching each time somebody opens the door,
and perfectly ignored
by everyone that walks by.

I picked up a book, read a page, put it back, and played a note
for the dead poems
as I left.